Polish word-final nasal vowels

Abstract

Although there exists a set of prescriptive rules concerning the realization of Polish nasal vowels, it can be observed that their pronunciation differs across dialects, especially in word-final position. While there is ample research on vowel nasality in Polish, sociolinguistic studies investigating the realization of nasal vowels seem to be scant and this is why we aim to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between the realization of word-final nasal vowels and different sociolinguistic factors including age, gender, education, place of residence, and style (read vs. conversational speech). Moreover, we focus on a potential change in prestige associated with the variation. Fifty native speakers of Polish living in Greater Poland were asked to read aloud a text and describe a picture. Having analysed the words containing nasal vowels word-finally, we found, inter alia, statistically significant associations between age and the variation in the realization of nasal vowels.

Word-final /ɔ̃/ in Greater Poland Polish: A Cumulative Context Effect?

“…reading as opposed to speaking). These studies show that nasal stopping of word-final /ɔ/ was present 30 years ago (Witaszek-Samborska 1985), continues its existence as a variable process to this day (Baranowska, 2018;Baranowska & Kaźmierski, 2020), even though it might be slowly receding. Its frequency of occurrence is systematically influenced by a number of internal and external factors.…”

“…In Kaźmierski et al (2019), only 3 out the 14 speakers had a nasal stopping rate above 50%, and the overall nasal stopping rate was rather low (25%). In a linguistics study, Baranowska and Kaźmierski (2020) investigated the association between the social variables of age, sex, education and location (urban vs. rural), as well as speaking style and the realization of Polish nasal vowels in the speech of 50 Greater Poland residents. Audio recordings were manually coded for the realization of word-final nasal vowels.…”

Sociolinguistic dimensions of dialect space of Ukraine and Poland

“…These issues are successfully foregrounded in the monograph of the famous philologist Feller (2020), who analysed the linguistic situation in Lviv and surrounding areas in the 18 th century on a broad historical background, taking into account socio-cultural events. The final nasal vowels presented in literary language and dialects are fully explained in Polish linguistics (Baranowska and Kaźmierski, 2020).…”

Complex diachronies of final nasalization in Austronesian and Dakota

“…Polish nasal vowel ã (< Proto-Slavic *ę and *ǫ) developed into the Standard Polish ɔw̃ (and ɛw̃, 7 following a conditioned split). The diphthongized ɔw̃ further developed into ɔm in Greater Poland (Stieber 1973: 129;Baranowska & Kaźmierski 2020;Kaźmierski & Szlandrowicz 2020). In A'ingae, nasal stops in the coda position nasalized the preceding vowel and underwent deletion.…”